October 4, 2026 marks the 800th anniversary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi. During yesterday’s clergy day we were challenged to consider how we can develop humility in our lives.
I believe humility is something we are all born with; it is our natural state. No one enters this world with money, pride or arrogance. Instead, we develop these vices as we engage with the world, adopting them as survival tools to protect ourselves or to elevate our status in the face of adversity.
I quickly found myself drawn to Saint Francis, who warned his brothers that pride was the most dangerous of all sins. To Francis, pride was more than a flaw; it was a vice that created a barrier between the soul and God.
To Francis, humility was a virtue. He urged his brothers to be “the least among others,” and he therefore named his order the “Minor Brothers”—they were to be the least of all people.
The word “humility” comes from “humus”—the earth. To be humble is to be like soil: grounded and, at times, trampled upon. This was the radical path Francis imposed on his followers. He taught them to rejoice even when they were insulted or beaten, recognizing that in such lowliness they were closest to the heart of Christ.
This choice was deliberate. Francis formed his order at a time when religious institutions wielded great power, and bishops and priests were members of the social elite. Yet Francis chose to identify with the marginalized. He embraced “evangelical poverty,” adopting the lifestyle of the poor–his disciples who possessed nothing, wore simple robes, and worked or begged for their daily bread. Their way of life was so radical that the Church took years to officially register the order, fearing its austerity was too extreme.
Francis did not arrive at this conviction in a vacuum; he came from a privileged background and understood the weight of pride. However, his encounter with Christ allowed him to return to the fundamental truth of the Gospel: we are dust, and to dust we shall return.
I personally believe the Gospel must always shift our values. It must remind us that we are not immortal, but temporal beings. In the end we all share the same fate. When we truly accept this, we are forced to identify with the poor and the oppressed, recognizing that we are all interconnected. Furthermore, as people of faith we believe that God owns everything—we are mere tenants. When we die, nobody carries anything with them; we are born with nothing and die with nothing.
May God help us strip away the survival tools of pride and arrogance, and grant us the grace to be humble, following the sacred pattern of Christ and Saint Francis.
From the E-Crier of October 1, 2026. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter.